Story ID: 064Jan19
Operators Concerned about New Seletar Restriction
By: Chen Chuanren
Caption: The noise-abatement restrictions could limit bizav's access to the airport, group warns.
Word Count: 332
Business aviation ground handlers at Singapore’s Seletar airport are concerned about the new flight restrictions imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), worrying that it will eventually affect flight operations. The CAAS has notified operators that a noise-abatement night curfew will begin on January 1, restricting operations into Seletar from 14:00 to 23:00 UTC (10 p.m. to 7 a.m. local time), with an exception for medical and emergency flights.

The CAAS declared Seletar a scheduled facilitated airport effective October 28 and also allocated four slots daily for training flights, each lasting an hour long. CAAS said the number of non-training aircraft movements has increased by 10 percent over the past five years. 

“At the same time, there are daily training flights taking place at Seletar Airport. As such, we are reviewing plans to segregate training and non-training flights for more efficient use of capacity by all airport users,” said a CAAS spokesperson.

“Minus the curfew and training hours, that will leave us less than 12 hours for business aviation traffic. Once Firefly begins flying commercial service from Seletar, they will also take up 10 movements daily, further limiting the number of business aviation movements,” said Universal Aviation Singapore managing director Yvonne Chan. “We might see Seletar become a slots airport.”

Chan said should that happen, it could see more congestion and there could be cases where users would manipulate the slots by either booking slots that they do not need or more than what is required, and added that other operators have similar concerns.

“We hope to convince CAAS to at least shorten the curfew to 11 p.m to 6 a.m.—at least we would have more two hours,” she said. She added that the company noticed an increasing trend of long-haul flights arriving after sunset for technical stops, and operators will now have to change their plans. Universal alone handles about 10 movements daily, with around four happening at night. 

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